Chinese air force planes join search for missing Vietnamese aircraft

BEIJING, June 20 (ChinaMil) -- The Chinese People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) sent two aircraft on June 18 to join the efforts of searching for two missing Vietnamese aircraft and crew in waters of the Beibu Gulf between Vietnam's northern coastline and China's Hainan Island.

A Russian-made SU-30 fighter jet of the Vietnam Air Forces disappeared from radar screens on June 14 in waters of the Beibu Gulf and contact with one pilot of the plane was lost, media reports said.

Later on afternoon of June 16, a Vietnamese coastguard plane with nine people aboard went missing while searching for the lost fighter.

Relevant rescue work is underway at present.

The two Chinese military aircrafts took off from a military airport in central China's Hubei province and arrived at an airport in south China's Guangdong province on the morning of June 18.

It is the second time for the Chinese air force to join international search and rescue operations. After Flight MH370 of Malaysia was missing on March 8, 2014, the PLAAF had successively sent 5 planes of 3 models to the Gulf of Thailand, Andaman Sea and South Indian Ocean to search for it, with a total of 42 sorties flying 346 hours and covering an area of 273,578 square kilometers.